Your Questions About Solar Energy Generator Suppliers

PublishedSeptember 28, 2017

Nancy asks…

Solar Installation – Novice (needs help)?

Hello,

I’m preparing to install solar power into my computing room as a method to reduce electric cost’s and as a backup in case of a power failure; I decided this as my documents we’re corrupted when our Power Supplier fed a small 100W’s into our entire household, damaging my SSD (data drive – non-mechanical).

So far I snagged up a couple of online bargains to get started such as some 12V 90AH Battery’s and Solar Panels.

In order to power up to a 1kW – 240V appliance, how would this need to be setup / what else do I need? I’d prefer to draw the power from the mains during daytime, and automatically switch to the solar / battery’s after sunset or a power-cut.

The power drawn won’t likely reach 1kW for more than 10 minutes, depending on the task I need computing; else it will drop to around 230W an hour.

Also how many hours of power can I get from a single day’s worth of charging, let’s saying I’m using 100W an hour? (an average of 11 hours sunlight).

If you have any advice / answers then please let me know, as I’m lost to what needs doing next.

Kind Regards,

Jordan.

admin answers:

Lead acid batteries are 50% efficient while charging, you will also need 24 V to charge each 12 V battery. You can expect maybe 8 hours of usable sunshine per day which if you assume you will get a full day of sunshine each day then you would need at lest 21 of those panels. If you assume a 50% chance of having a good day of sunshine then you would need enough battery power to last 5 days so you would need 24 of those solar panels but if you assume you needed to recharge all those batteries on the sixth day then you would need 388 of those solar panels.

A purely solar powered solution should cost about $30,000 not including the energy needed for air-conditioning.

I would suggest you buy a surge protector and a UPS instead. If you really want to be able to take a long term hit on the grid, have a transfer switch and a generator that can be started when you’re on UPS battery power. Select a tri-power generator and connect it to your natural gas line, if the natural gas line is broken, you can use propane or gasoline with the same generator. In the future there will be hybrid diesel generators that can run mostly on natural gas with just enough diesel for the compression ignition and could switch to running entirely on diesel or bio-diesel.

James asks…

Saving money on electricity…………………?

Power costs are making news across the country and over three years bills have increased an average of 12 per cent in most states.

St Vincent de Paul’s energy analyst Gavin Dufty releases his forecast for power prices next week.

Carbon pollution policy will increase the average bill by $200, the introduction of smart meters will add another $80 and what are know as dynamic tariffs could boost that by another $200.

“Expect to see the biggest prices increase, or the start of the price increases in Victoria and then we’d probably suggest Queensland and then followed by New South Wales,” Gavin said.

There is not much we can do about what the power companies charge so we are being encouraged to control what we use.

Anne Armansin is employed by Origin Energy to show customers how to reduce electricity consumption.

“We can all do something about it,” she said.

“I have noticed over the decade that people are willing to if they do get a high bill they’ll call and say help us.”

Some easy options involve changing behaviour, so for every degree an air-conditioner will use 10 percent more electricity and even after it has been turned off by the remote it is sucking power.

Every appliance on standby 24/7 can chew up to 15 watts of electricity. It soon adds up.

“There are about 27 appliances in the average house that use standby power and it amounts to about 800kw of wasted power a year,” Anne said.

That amounts to $160 a year. If we all turned off our appliances at the switch across the country we would save enough power to run every home in Western Australia.

There are gadgets to help, power boards that cut standby power by turning off one appliance.

Anne said our most power hungry consumers are Generation Y.

“They’re filling their rooms with big screen TVs, games and high powered computers and they have a lot of fun,” she said.

Ed Parker is one person who is being careful and has gone from power consumer to power generator.

Photvoltaic solar panels produce more power than his family can use so instead of getting $300 bills every quarter, he is getting $300 cheques.

“We’re actually returning better that 7-8 per cent on that extra investment,” he said.

The pool filter is another power-hungry device. It runs eight hours a day and in winter it does not have to.

“You can drop it down to either four or two hours depending on what your pool supplier tells you,” Anne said.

Then there is the hot water.

Choose an off peak tariff for your hot water system. Switch to solar if you can or an energy efficient heat pump.

Energy saving tips
1. Switch appliances off at the wall or get standby power saving power boards.
2. Use fans instead of air-conditioning, they use one-tenth of the power.
3. Replace old light bulbs with efficient globes.

admin answers:

Salam Alaikum,
thanks for sharing this info ..
And also, we must save electricity to help save our planet.. We humans are seriously wasting away our resources.

Another way of saving electricity is:
once you turn off the computer ( at home or office ) to turn off the main power also.

The owner of this website, Deborah Stowers, is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking Solar Energy Generators to Amazon properties including, but not limited to, amazon.com, endless.com, myhabit.com, smallparts.com, or amazonwireless.com. Certain content that appears on this site comes from Amazon Services LLC. This content is provided 'as is' and is subject to change or removal at any time.